A former 'Made In Chelsea' star raised £750,000 to help more people become influencers online

Zyper, the tech startup run by former "Made In Chelsea" star
Amber Atherton, has raised a £750,000 seed round to help the
company develop its app that it hopes will turn people into "an
army of micro affiliates."

Atherton, however, wants to make it easier for people to be paid
to post online. Zyper said in its press release that it wants
social media users to be able to earn "content creation air
miles" for their posts that can be redeemed for rewards.

It sounds similar to Klout, the San-Francisco startup that
measures influence and rewards the most influential people with
perks. Atherton, however, doesn't see the comparison. "Klout's
execution and timing was wrong," she told Business Insider.
"There is still a massive opportunity in understanding personal
brand influence and peer-to-peer networks. Klout sort of of felt
like Linkedin with an influence score."

Zyper says it uses its algorithms to identify influence on a
"granular" level, regardless of the number of followers someone
has.

Could the growth of Zyper cause social media sites to become
saturated with more and more sponsored posts? "There will
definitely be a rise in spon [sponsored] posts as brands leverage
peer-to-peer endorsements but ultimately people need their feeds
to remain engaging, and just a tirade of spon posts will lose you
engagement, followers and authenticity — it's got to be
balanced," Atherton said.

"Zyper is about being an exclusive ambassador for the brands you
love for a longer period of time which builds trust and a greater
recommendation conversion."

A video of Zyper's prototype app shows that users progress
though levels based on their "Zyper points."

Zyper

An example campaign shown in the prototype app involves users
making 10 of their own posts per month for three months, as well
as sharing three posts by the brand.

The prototype included example rewards such as free gifts,
goodie bags, and a live makeup tutorial with supermodel Karlie
Kloss.

Zyper's website currently lists
clients including Sony, Walgreens, Propercorn, Estée
Lauder Companies, and film streaming service MUBI. Zyper
said in its press release that it's in talks with the government
as well as the United Nations. The company also has a
strategic partnership with WPP-owned ad agency MEC.

"I used to have a long note going on my iPhone that I'd update
regularly with caption ideas and everyone asked me to caption
their photo," Atherton said in a press release at the time.

A quotation for an
Instagram photo found by Rubric.Rubric

"People would text me photos all day asking for caption ideas and
it just got to the point where I was like OK I'm gonna build a
visual recognition system and embed machine learning to solve
this problem in a more scalable way."